Intel ignores Steve Jobs, adds touchscreen to Ultrabook Intel's research department has overruled Steve Jobs: touchscreens have been added to the next generation of Chipzilla's Ultrabook spec. "Touch skipped the notebook, skipped the Ultrabook. It was dedicated to phones, it was dedicated to tablets," Mooly Eden, general manager of Intel's PC Client Group told his audience on …
Even if he doesn't believe Apple's research, and his own colleagues, the fact that no touch screen PC appears to sell well, and various tablets and phones with touchscreens are selling well should tell him that people don't like using touch screens vertically.
Assuming I have enough battery life, I can conmfortably use my iphone for 2 hours . I find that after 2 hours of using a PC with a vertical touchscreen, my arms are tired.
Admittedly, the Ultrabooks Intel are talking about may have a screen that can fold back so it's horizontal, but Intel and Microsoft didn't do a great job of marketing tablets, did they?
we bought some dell laptops recently and one of them "came of the shelf" with everything on it (silly reseller)
so it had a touch pad, _and_ "nipple" + keys, plus we always use external USB mice, and then I gesticulated at the screen and it clicked where I touched *shudder*.
It was a great spec laptop, but there were just _too_ many input devices (and you couldn't turn them off)
I have a touch screen ,tablet ,in two days I have had it;I hated then loved it and hated it again,
today I love it ;;at 81 without my sons guidance I am up a gum tree; he is genius
His fingers are magic wands Amen;
Ignorance is not bliss,with touch screens ,except on my Kindle
But on my tablet reading or listening to books,is brilliant ,
It is exactly that reason why it doesn't work. Computers are designed to be used with your arms resting on a desk or other surface.
While we all want a computer like in Minority Report, the fact is we're all going to need to get a lot fitter before we can use one for 7 hours a day.
Same goes for a touchscreen mounted high up, plus the fact that is is annoying to have to move from keyboard/mouse to the screen, and you thought moving from keyboard to mouse was hard work.
No we don't. Standing all day long moving my arms every single time I want to interact with a system is not how I prefer to use a computer.
Sitting in a comfortable chair, with a table set at the right inclination, a good, responsive keyboard and a wireless mouse is how I prefer working on a computer.
The 200" screen, however, I would like.
I used toughbooks with touch screens for ages in work and must say while I did not do away with a mouse or such the touch screen on them was handy and in some cases could speed up my working. Like anything it is all a matter of how you use them. In a laptop, in my case a hardened one I could toss around as needed and was not worried about breaking, it made got used mostly to poke up a file and display it much quicker. I can see it catching on, these systems will be light enough for a person to hold one handed and poke at. It worked for me in the application and times I used it, long term work naturally I used a desk chair and mouse etc but on the go in the field repairing stuff or using it to run media as I repaired stuff it was a blessing.
My big wish is a reversion towards the original tablet laptops where you can reverse and fold the screen down, then tossing a schematic or diagnostic flow chart on screen is easy and you can scroll and zoom one handed with minimal concentration dedicated away from your work.
Hey Intel, welcome to 2011! Cause the hundreds of thousands of Asus Transformer users that have a keyboard can tell you that a keyboard and a touchscreen works. I don't know what tests Apple did, but keyboard and touchscreen together are great.
I just upgraded from the best overall phone I ever had, a T-Mobile G2 (HTC Desire Z). Having the keyboard was great, I am still thinking if I should sell the HTC Amaze 4G or the G2...
I have a similar keyboard phone - the Xperia Pro (much better than Desire Z :P) and agree that keyboard phones are vastly superior to touch only phones - so much so that I pity the masses who insist on inferior (and often more expensive) touch-only devices (e.g. GSII is huge and bulky, processor looks better on paper, but Xperia Pro pwns it in real life) - I would never use a touch-only phone ever again!
However, the same cannot be said for adding touch to laptops. On a phone the touch screen is within easy reach of your fingers/thumbs. A phone screen is also easy to clean with a quick wipe on your clothes.
"so much so that I pity the masses who insist on inferior (and often more expensive) touch-only devices"
Oh thank ye sir, so kind of you. * tug of the forelock*. I feel so lowly and humble in the precence of a true master of the mobile device. *bows down* I must avert my eyes from from your glorious countenance and wisdom.
Ever thought that, and here's a shock basement-boy, that real-people in the real-world all have different tastes and interests? We all think, work, fart, burp and play in different ways. If we were all the same then there would be one computer, one O/S, one mobile phone, one car, etc....
My pitiful Galaxy S2 may not be as superior as your stunning gadget but it's a phone that plays music and games as that's all I need from it most of the time.
As much as I despised Jobs, he is right. Laptops should not have touch-screens - Microsoft is also wasting so much time on this nonsense, that the more I hear about the bungle that will be called Windows 8, the more I want to switch to Linux.
The exception is for hybrid devices where the keyboard can fold away so that you can use the device in a tablet mode and in a horizontal position.
Flat is definitely better than pushing at a screen resting on your knees.
Does anyone else hate finger prints and mess on their screen?
A mobile screen it tablet screen is easy to clean, especially if held, but try it with a laptop.
One hand to reach behind the screen to hold it before the other presses.
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Just another example of Steve Jobs being full of $hit, the same man that claimed Apple didn't use focus groups.
My tablet has a kick stand so I use it at an angle, the same angle a notebook screen is at and the same angle an iPad cover props the screen at.
He simply never had a properly touch enabled version of OS X because his long term plan was always to faze out OS X while moving everything over to a more sophisticated version of iOS.
I think in the Ultrabook market, cost and thickness are going to be 2 very important selling points.
Including a touchscreen that doesn't really add much often used functionality to the device isnt going to catch on too quickly amongst manufacturers, except maybe as a build to order option. Unless, of course, Intel puts its food down and strictly mandates it 's inclusion - at which point everyone switches to the AMD spec.
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After using a MacBook for a few years, I find using a mouse a comparative waste of time, going back and forth from the mouse to the keyboard.
Similarly, I don't believe in touch screens for laptops, because moving the hand across the screen is simply too time-consuming and tiring.
It should be a two-part design. Tablet. Keyboard+mouse. Bluetooth link. Software that adjusts the user interface so that you don't have to touch the vertical screen to accomplish anything when the keyboard/mouse unit is present. In "enjoyment mode" just take the tablet and leave the keyboard behind.
OK, it's probably trivial to make it so that the two parts clip together for transport and for keyboard use on the move - you might call this "netbook mode". But at home there would be a plastic stand for mounting the tablet vertically above the level of one's desk, and put keyboard wherever the user finds most comfortable.
As previously mentioned - the Asus Transformer already has this form factor/input model
and after nearly 12 months with it - I love it - it's completely second nature, and doesnt involve any more movement than taking hands from the keyboard to trackpad - and an awful lot more accurate.
Of course if you want to you can plug in a mouse - and the best bit no trackpad to get in the way of your typing - (it's great to turn it off on the transformer).
Those who havent tried it - don't knock it - despite having to use a traditional laptop for work I still do find myself subconciously picking up a document from the non touch screen and having to revert back to trackpad/mouse - In the words of Trek's Commander Scott - "How Quaint" ..
I currently run two Iiyama gloss touchscreens at home on my main pc and have a HP TX2 and I love touchscreen. I may be in a minority if most of you lot are to be believe bit I completley agree with Intels findings; its great to be able to browse by finger, use local explorer and it comes into its own with document scrolling.
The trick is not think exclusive touchscreen and think complement. They support a mouse and keybord perfectly and I never expect them to replace a keyboard but, a mouse? Yeah very much so! Windows 8 pre-beta released a few months ago worked great and if you never went techie, you never needed a mouse (the HTML5 front end was perfect for touch).
Intel will patent something crucial to it and lock Apple out of the ultra-touch-book market without paying a fat tithe to compete, which Apple will ignore reasoning, as usual, that they're Apple so 'fuck off' and then get sued for a billion trillon dollars. And so forth
What goes around comes around.
big icons and buttons etc., and probably indicates different applications. If I'm sitting in bed with a laptop running media streaming software, skype or browsing, touchscreen might be fine, though I suspect a large trackpad would be also work. If I'm working with excel, I'll pass on the touchscreen.
On a similar topic, I hooked up an apple bluetooth trackpad to windows and found it to be a rather good mouse replacement for across the living room media control. Not as functional as in osx, but accurate, robust and handy when my work laptop was hooked up to the tv and running vlc.
Interesting about Excel...I think there's actually a case for a bit of both worlds here....Excel is quite a non-linear app -- ie I might fiddle with cell A51 and then cell BG204. Moving from one to the other using either keyboard shortcuts or the mouse is definitely suboptimal compared with being able to just touch the cell I'm interested in. Similarly, selecting a range would be much easier and faster with a touch input than it is with a mouse or keyboard shortcuts. And resizing the page through pinching is superhelpful. I speak as a long-term user of Excel on Windows and a newbie with Numbers on iPad.
It helps if you consider the context of that keynote speech he was giving: he was launching some new Macs and discussing the new multi-touch trackpad features they were introducing to OS X.
Note: "OS X", not "iOS".
OS X is a desktop computer OS that still sticks pretty closely to the traditional WIMP desktop metaphor, with windows and (relatively) tiny widgets designed for clicking on with a precise pointing device like a mouse or trackpad. Those GUI elements are generally too small for pointing at accurately with a finger. (Yes, there are doubtless some people with very thin, sharp, pointy fingers, but "some" people is not "most" people.)
Apple's iDevices proved popular because iOS' GUI was designed *from the ground up* for touch-based interaction. OS X, Windows, KDE and GNOME were not. Any attempts to nail touchscreen features onto those will inevitably result in a compromise.
Yes, Intel, I see your hand raised: what is it?
"Please, sir! OS X might not be designed for touchscreen use, but Windows 8 has that new 'Metro' touch-based UI!"
Bingo! And THAT is what Intel will have been running on their prototype touch-screen "ultrabooks" for their focus groups to play with.
Jobs was right in October 2010. Nobody anyone cared about was offering a touch-screen desktop OS back then, and the MacBook Air line was still in its infancy. Times change. Technologies change. OS X has gone for multi-touch touch pads, rather than touch screens; Windows 8 is going for an untried chimeric approach: part WIMP, part touch-screen. Whether that will actually prove successful is anybody's guess, but I suspect Windows 8's touch screen features may take a while to catch on with the laptop and desktop set.
You don't have to throw out everything every time you take a different turn with technology. All of the different seemingly diametrically opposed input methods can all live in harmony together as can the applications that access them. It's only this "one true vision" approach that has problems.
Keyboard. Mouse. IR remote. Touchscreen.
Different interfaces can be used in different contexts as appropriate.
Apple-TV:~ root# uname -a
Darwin Apple-TV 11.0.0 Darwin Kernel Version 11.0.0: Tue Nov 1 20:33:58 PDT 2011; root:xnu-1878.4.46~1/RELEASE_ARM_S5L8930X AppleTV2,1 arm K66AP Darwin
Whilst I wouldn't want to have only touch, I could see it being quite useful whilst typing. Moving your fingers up and selecting something on the laptop screen mid-type would be quicker than moving down to the trackpad and moving the pointer. Defiantly quicker than moving your whole arm over to separate mouse.
There's all this "yes this upright touchscreen will work on an ultrabook", but develop a god damn OS which will work in this situation! Windows 7 is still well off the mark. And we will never see Mac OS X installed on an iMac with a touchscreen surface. So where do we go? Intel needs to get out of dreamland and get some distortion reality field to tell us why it will work. Not tell us why Apple/Steve were wrong.
I'd rather see a touch-screen keyboard which changes dependant on application and offers more than a base of solid keys. Anything that tries to be hybrid (ie Windows 8), is bound to be trouble for users.
I have an ASUS Transformer, if I use it for any length of time on the keyboard dock and then work at one of my desktop machines I usually catch myself about to touch or drag one of the screen icons. OK, it's muscle memory - but it's muscle memory because touchscreen on a computer with muse and keyboard can be useful.
Now, not everybody is going to like it - the solution is hardware and software that accept, and function, with a variety of input methods. Forget the 'right' or 'wrong' way, the productive way wins out every time.
... a big touch sensitive screen (say 2ft x 3ft) that can be laid flat (or angled slightly). Happy to have a soft keyboard on it. Must have ledges on side to put coffee cup, chocolate bars and screen wipes.
Get the best of both worlds then. Space to layout my work any way I want (I use two screens at the moment) coupled with friendliness of touch and support for hands, fingers (and a nice warm surface when i sleep on it).
Thinking about it, a touch stylus would be a useful accessory when fingers aren't accurate enough.
Has anyone asked HP? They spent a large part of the 1990s trying to convince the world that touchscreen interfaces on PC monitors were the way forward. The world, I recall, quite rightly laughed at them as PCs, as then configured, worked much better with mice and keyboards and this holds true today for the tasks for which typing-oriented PCs are used. Browsing-oriented PCs, such as tablets, do work much better with a touch interface, as do specialised devices such as medical monitoring kit where HP did turn their touchscreens into an advantage, but if you need to type anything of any length then I'd much rather have the appropriate interface. Never mind writing a novel, how about coding a decent sized lump of C++ using a touchscreen? Mouses and keyboards for courses.
I had to support machines which worked as smart POS terminals, the screen was in the traditional arms length and there were standard operating system actions where touching the screen (even dragging) was better and felt more natural than using the mouse.
Obviously the POS system has large-ish buttons but even selecting the start button and selecting the prorgrams was easier because there was none of that collapsing when the mouse slipped over another option on its way between menu strips.
It took the best part of a year, because I wasn't working on these systems every day like the front of house staff, but just like everything else, I eventually found myself swapping between the mouse, keyboard and touch screen fluidly, when it suited me.
Which is to come first, the touch screen or the touch-orientated app? Moan all you like, but it will come, and people will moan and bitch about it, but it will become as much a part of life as the keyboard and mouse ... like it ... or not.
To anyone who has used a touchscreen phone and then absentmindedly found themselves trying to poke at their laptop screen, the concept of a touchscreen as a secondary input device is great. The point here is that it is secondary. There are certain things a touch-screen is good for, such as pinching and zooming on maps, dragging things about, etc. but the keyboard and mouse are still king and queen for so many proper applications, and I can't foresee a time when people aren't going to want to use them.
It is SO interesting. How huge amounts of effort, commitment, and energy are devoted to the same, trivial, irrelevant things. It has always been thus - viz- in Christian theology - Homoiousia or Homoousia. It really doesn't matter whether we use keyboards, mouse clicks (thank you Doug Engelbart), gestures, voice, or "thought waves" to access information. The special class of people who worry about such things are those who really don't have any information to provide - there are a lot of people who know how write in some language, but most of them, like these people, don't have very much to say. The same is true of "content providers" over the Internet. Their communication is not significant, though it may be topical. Nobody remembers which faction won the chariot races at the last race sponsored by Caligula in Rome.
So, touch screen, mouse, or keyboard, who cares about that, as long as information is accessible? Only the those who really have nothing to say, but are ambitious and greedy, want to make money on the latest gadget.
Quite right. Because there are no other possible form factors.
It would be quite impossible to manufacture a touchscreen half-top - a laptop where the keyboard 'half' is shorter than the screen "half" and that allowed itself to be opened 180 degrees so the whole thing could lie flat on the coffee table. Nope. Can't be done.
It would be quite impossible to manufacture a pad-like thing that had a slide-out keyboard like my phone. Nope. Can't be done.
Yup. We've completely exhausted all possibilities.
Now where's that irony tag?
Touchscreens on an ultrabook? Won't someone please think of the.... hinges?
On most recent craptops with twin hinges, poking the screen constantly is going to strain these cheap plastic mechanisms to breaking point in fairly short order - unless they're redesigned.
But then even if the hinges are strong and stiff enough, and the laptop is a lightweight ultrabook, you're going to gradually end up pushing your machine further and further away from you unless you have a soft touch or the machine has better friction to the desk.
... there are new PCs that comprise a slim form with a flat board encased behind a vertical laptop screen; essentially bits of a laptop rearranged. See them from perhaps four suppliers in Staples, none are shown on Staples website.
Half the models have touchscreens. So the experiment is in progress, see what sells.
I bet the answer is that a mouse is easier.
When they are used for Flash presentations where customers explore the features of %product%, the touch is great and works brilliantly.
When they are used as actual computers, the touch is never used and we mess about trying to get a mouse and keyboard connected neatly.
Some of that is down to the software - few to no software applications are designed for touch.
The other is exactly what Jobs said - a vertical touchscreen is tiring to use. It is fine as long as you rarely use it - eg only for selecting an individual item of interest, then using alternative input to manipulate it.
The reason is quite simple - you cannot accurately position your hand in mid air for any length of time. That's why mouse and trackball work so well, because you're resting your arm on the desk.
I wonder how I use the touchscreen on my phone - horizontally or vertically? Well I don't look for a surface to put it on, for sure, I hold it up...
OK, so that's not the same form factor, I hear people cry. But the EeePad Transformer with keyboard is, and it's brilliant to be able to integrate touch into how you use a machine, as others have said.
On top of that, I do a lot of photo editing, and I use a graphics tablet to help me. It would be massively easier to be able to use the screen directly, particularly when travelling or editing in the field - exactly where I would want to use an Ultrabook. So although I wouldn't want it to be the only input method, I think it's entirely sensible.
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